The present disclosure is directed to monolayer stress microscopy, and more particularly to determination of cellular monolayer stress forces (for example, based on determination of traction forces exerted by the cellular monolayer on a substrate on which the cellular monolayer is placed) using monolayer stress microscopy.
A variety of fundamental processes in development, health, and disease depend upon the coordinated motion of cell groups. Conventionally, to describe coordinated cellular motions in these processes, high-throughput genomic approaches have identified molecular players and mapped their interaction into comprehensive signaling networks. But even with detailed signaling and structural information in hand, the role of intercellular adhesion in collective migration is disputed, and understanding of collective cellular migration lacks predictive power and remains largely descriptive. Central to these limitations is the absence of a physical picture that links cell motion to mechanical stresses exerted within the cell body and at cell-cell boundaries, for these stresses have never before been measured. Indeed, some studies have concluded that calculating forces across multiple cell-cell contacts is mathematically insoluble (Z. Liu et al., “Mechanical tugging force regulates the size of cell-cell junctions,” Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 107, 9944 (Jun. 1, 2010)).